St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1887-04-02
The Scenery in the Black Hills Strange,
Eccentric, Picturesque and
Grand.
Bear Lodge. Unique and Mysterious, Com
posed of Thousands of Unbroken
Prisms.
The Hot Springs a Great Curiosity
The Mountain Parks Remark
ably Bea utiful.
The Black Hills Branch of the North
western--Politics at Rapid
City.

any adequate mention of their scenery
Their mineral, timber and agricultural re-
sources, and the enterprise and imaginative
resources of the people in advertising the
country are not more remarkable than the
scenery of this strange geological upheaval;
and 1 believe the time is coming, when rail
roads penetrate the hills and the irrepressi-
Die G. P. A. gets onto their beauties, that
they will be thronged with sight seerS. Such
will find more than the ordinary mountain
and ravine scenery, of which there is no
lack in this land. These wild and romantic
features have charms all their own. as will
appear. The granite in which Harney's
peak and the core of the up-turn is COM
posed is of a peculiar constitution; coarse,
hard and friable. 1t exists in immense
bodies of large crystals, whence one geolo
gist christened it ''Cyclopean granite" 1t
disintegrates freely and ''weathers' in fan
tastic shapes. The singular sharp cliffs
around Harney's peak, called variously
the eccentric granite dykes scattered through
the central hills are illustrations of this
rugged formation.
MATO TEPEE.
Still more singular and impressive fOrma-
tions are to be found in the volcanic rocks
of the Northern Hills. Bear Butte. an
isolated boulder rising abruptly from the
prairie near Fort Meade, and Bear Lodge
(NIato Tepee, of the Indians). are of this
ilk. The latter is said by biologists to be
without a precedent in baSaltc crystalliZa-
ton. 1t is natural obelisk rising sheer
1000 feet above the banks of the Belle
Fourche; is 500 feet in diameter at the base,
tapering i'll a graceful convex to a diameter
of 375 feet at the top. 1t is composed of
thousands of prisms that extend unbroken
from base to summit. This continuity of
the crystals is the remarkable feature of
the mass, the tendency OF trappe rock being
to fracture tranSyerSely in cryStalliZing and
weather away to the appearance OF stairs
whence the name, 'trappe," stair-as in
Giants CauSeway, Ireland. Prof. Newton
says: Bear Lodge, ill its shape and struc
ture, appears not to have been repeated
elsewhere by nature, but stands alone,
unique and mysterious. 1t occupies the
space of a chimney to some subterranean
furnace. which overlooked with molten
rock and cooling. crystailized downward.
The surrounding walls of the chimney
erOded and left this mighty monument to
the working of crystalliZation, that power
scarcely less mysterious than the force of
life itself. No one has ever set foot on the
top Of this monument, and l wonder that
no foolhardy Yankee has ever repeated the
achievement of the British sailors who
scaled Pompey's Pillar, Egypt, and had a
IssssssAd ssnrees The p4rtr ,sslat first holds a
Fourth of July celebration on top of
Bear Lodge will be immortalized in local
history. One of these days some one will
fence it in, construct a stairway to the top
and get rich on the gate money.
THE HOT SPRINGS,
in Fall River county. where Representative.
and Doctor Stewart and associates are build
ing up sanitarium, is a greater curiosity than
healer-granting all that its owners claim
for it in the latter respect. Here Fall river
! jumps out OF the ground like Jack-in-the-
box. mot at having been confined too long.
Aside from the spontanety of this sudden
and bad-smelling apparition, and the TO-
mantle scenery up and down the valley to
the falls of the river, there are phenomena
to attract the naturalist and novelty hunter.
The warm waters generate vegetable life
rapidly. and the springs being differently
impregnated chemically Gas at Manitou.
COLI. each seems to have become the hab-
itat of a different variety Of alga
THE MOUNTAIN PARKS.
But the feature that shall some day be
more admired than all sports of nature is
the beautiful mountain parks. These are
smooth, grassy, fowery, treeless stretches
of acres or miles in area, hedged in OF
broken up by Lodges, crags and dykes all
covered with pines. or terminating abruptly
in gloomy gorges and deep canyons, with
water features interspersed ''tO the queens
taste" The contrasts between the sublime
and the beautiful heighten the effect of
each and work on the aesthetic sense won
derfully-if the spectator has any aesthetic
! sense and isn't too hungry, which is quite
apt to be the case under present facilities
for travel. When the projected narrow.
guage railroad from Rapid City to Custer is
completed-mind, [ say when!-it will be
one of the most famous scenic routes in the
country. In word, the Black Hills are
gigantic curiosity shop and dime museum,
where the geOlOgiSt. sightSeer, health
seeker, wealth-seekeI, landscape artist and
student of freaks, physical and human. can
see q bigger show for less money than under
any other canopy.
RAILROAD TALK.
Speaking of railroads ''when," there
seems to be better prospects now for the
much promised and more predicted extern
sion of the Black Hills branch of the North
western system through the Northern Hills.
The contractors, SubcOntractOrS and bridge
engineer of the company are out on the sur
vey between this place and Rapid City talk
ing and acting, as if they intended to begin
work soon. The invisible finger boards of
the work point towards the coal fields. Oil
regions and cattle ranges Of Wyoming by
the straightest line. The passage by con-
gress Of the act granting the right of way
across Ft. Meade military reservation has
made this extension possible only now. 1t
locks as if the Northwestern would win in
the race for the trade of the Northern Hills
| and Wyoming. A new
BARROW GAUGE PROJECT
has been sprung ON the unsuSpecting Hills
within few days. E. B. Chapman, of
Omaha. Rapid City parties and, it is said,
strong capitalists, are nursing this young
ster. 1t proposes to build from Rapid City
westward, directly into the heart of the
Hills, about 80 miles to the present eastern
terminus of the Black Hills and Ft. Pierre
railroad which is the high. sounding name of
| high-living little road built across the
mountains to supply the Homestake mines
and mills with wood and timber. The conf
| pleted connection would bring City into
communication with Lead City, vigorous
mining town three miles from this place and
possibly let Deadwood out to the world by
its back door first. 1t will lie for so miles
through heavy virgin timber and the richest
mineral section of the Hills, giving it a traffic
of machinery and supplies in and lumber
and ores out. There are also fresh and ear
nest-almost too earnest to be imaginary
reports Of early resumption of work on the
Rapid City and Southwestern narrow gauge,
upon the survey and drafts of which
considerable money has already been spent
! by New York capitalists. 1t lies through
the. Central hills and the Harvey tin dis
tricts, and points for Central Wyoming.
! AprOpOS of the aforementioned of these pro-